“It’s certainly positive that Google is investing more in Wikipedia, one of the most popular and generally trustworthy online resources in the world. But the decision isn’t altruistic: Supporting Wikipedia is also a shrewd business decision that will likely benefit Google for years to come.” – Wired
Blog
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Was Asked, ‘Are You An African Writer?’ Here’s Her Answer.
“I have no objection at all to being African, in fact it is all I know how to be and so I cannot possibly be anything else. And so my answer to the question “Are you an African Writer?” was no, and not because I am not proudly African. … I said no because I have increasingly been troubled by the subtle and not-so-subtle constraints that the question implies.” — New Statesman
Existential Threats
Toward the end of last year someone asked what was the most important reason for arts organizations to embrace community engagement: economic viability or cultural justice. But those issues are not separate ones. — Doug Borwick
The Oscars And The “Quality” Issue
Kevin Fallon: “The real dissonance, as this year’s Oscar nominees make clear, is between Oscar voters and critics. It’s not whether voters care if their movies have been seen by the general public that is the big question anymore. It’s whether they care if their movies are good.” – The Daily Beast
One Of The Hearts Of The Met Museum’s Ancient Greek Collection Was Arguably Looted En Masse
Writer Thomas O’Dwyer makes the case that The Cesnola Collection — assembled by an impoverished Italian aristocrat who emigrated to the States, fought in the Civil War, got himself appointed consul in Ottoman Cyprus for both the U.S. and the Russian Empire, and then got himself named the Met’s director — is comparable to the Elgin Marbles and was similarly criticized at the time. — 3 Quarks Daily
The Last Of Nashville’s Live Music Row Honkeytonks Closes
Nashville’s Music Row was a wonder. A collection of seedy bars that seemed to have been there forever, it was a smorgasbord of live music, played by musicians who played for tips. You could wander down the street, poking into whatever sounded interesting. It was all informal and kind of ramshackle. The city is booming, and now a tourist mecca, it’s “upgrading”… – The New York Times
Actress And Singer Kaye Ballard Dead At 93
‘[Her] antic performances took her from vaudeville and nightclubs to Broadway, regional theaters, and film and television roles, including as a sitcom star [of The Mothers-in-Law] and a frequent guest on talk shows.” — The Washington Post
Takeaways From This Year’s Oscar Nominations
The nominations reflect a completely polarized votership many of whose various constituencies can’t stand one another! The resemblance to real life is uncanny. – New York Magazine
Ten Years After Pina Bausch Died, Her Company Moves On To New Choreographers
Four of Tanztheater Wuppertal’s dancers, including veterans and new members, talk about enterting the very different artistic worlds of Dimitris Papaioannou and Alan Lucien Øyen. — The Guardian
Why A Flashy New Concert Hall Might Be Just What London Needs Right Now
In a country grappling with austerity and Brexit, a plan for a 2,000-seat “center for music” seems to hark back to the more confident, stable time in the early 2000s when the Tate Modern opened. Indeed, there have been claims that it could do for the city’s classical music scene what the new Tate did for London’s standing as a center for modern and contemporary art. – CityLab